


Ceramic Magic

by seimaisin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Meet-Cute, Yuletide, Yuletide 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 01:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8946898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: “There’s a … there’s a thing in my bathroom. It has wings. It looked … kinda like a woman?”

Urban fantasy AU. There's a portal to another world in Percy's bathroom. Vex can help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dallisons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dallisons/gifts).



Nobody expects to be attacked in the shower. Nobody normal, anyway.

Percy is mostly naked, bleeding from the neck, and one hundred percent freaked out. The only thing he can think to do is call Keyleth - she’s the only one who might believe him right now. By the time she picks up the phone, he’s feeling a little woozy. “Keyleth?”

“Percy? What’s wrong? You never call, you only text.”

“Keyleth …” His vision is starting to swim. That’s a bad sign. “There’s a … there’s a thing in my bathroom. It has wings. It looked … kinda like a woman?” He sinks down onto the couch. Rest. Rest is a good idea. “It bit me. I don’t know …”

He can hear Keyleth calling his name, but his eyelids are too heavy. Maybe he’ll just sleep for a minute …

*

When he wakes, he’s lying back on the couch, with only his towel to cover him, and there’s a gorgeous brunette sitting in the chair across from him. “So,” she says cheerfully, “there’s a portal to the Hidden Lands in your bathroom. How did that happen?”

Percy can only blink at her. “Who …” Then, as he remembers, he claps his hand over his neck - which feels smooth and unbroken. “Wait, what …”

“You’re lucky you’re friends with a druid,” the woman says. “Pixie venom is nasty stuff, but druids have the best detox spells.”

Druid? Pixies? “Who are you?” he finally blurts out.

“Oh, sorry. My name is Vex.” She holds out her hand; Percy sits up carefully, making sure not to dislodge his towel, before taking her hand. “I’m a Hunter.”

“A what?”

Vex looks at him for a moment before sighing. “Right. Keyleth should have warned me that you’re a mundane. Okay, I guess I’m doing the introduction spiel.” Then her eyes trail up and down his body. “But maybe you should get dressed first. You’re very distracting when you’re naked.”

Percy feels himself go bright red. But he does gather the towel around his waist, stand up, and march to his bedroom with as much dignity as he can muster.

*

The explanation takes a while, but Percy comes away from the whole thing with three basic ideas.

One: Magic exists. Not only that, but there’s a whole other world - the Hidden Lands - where all the creatures he used to read about as a kid exist. He’d be more doubtful about this whole thing, but honestly, after being attacked by a pixie in his own shower, he’s ready to put skepticism aside for a little while. 

Two: Someone - or something - ripped a hole between the Hidden Lands and their world in the corner of his shower. How and why, Vex has no idea. But it means that creatures that don’t belong here can get into his apartment and cause chaos. 

Three: Vex’s job is to hunt down creatures from the Hidden Land and put them back where they belong. Keyleth knows her, and called her in when Percy fainted in the middle of their phone call.

Oh, and there’s a four: by the time their conversation is over, Percy has a wicked crush on Vex. 

(Also five: his best friend is a druid, and has known about all of this stuff for years. He’s not entirely sure how he missed it, given how terrible Keyleth usually is at keeping secrets.)

“You’re taking this remarkably well,” Vex comments, as she finishes the cup of coffee Percy provided. “Keyleth was sure you’d freak out. She said you’re way more of a scientific type than a fanciful one.”

“That may be true, but I spent a lot of my childhood reading myths and fairy tales. Also, getting bitten by a pixie tends to make a believer out of people.”

“You’d be surprised. If I hadn’t told you the truth, how long do you think it would have taken you to convince yourself that you hallucinated? If Keyleth had told you she found you collapsed with no bite in your neck, what would you have thought?”

It doesn’t sit well with Percy, but he’s forced to nod. “I’m glad you told me. I like knowing things, even if they’re hard to deal with.”

Vex grins and winks at him. “Good man.” Then she pushes herself to her feet. “Come on, you want to see what a portal to the Hidden Lands looks like?”

What it looks like, as it turns out, is a large smudge on his bathroom tile. It’s not like his bathroom is really clean to begin with, so Percy hadn’t thought anything of it when he got into the shower this morning. But he watches as Vex mutters a few unfamiliar syllables, then thrusts her hand slowly through the wall, into the smudge … er, portal. “Is that a good idea?” he asks. 

She shushes him. “Let me concentrate.” So he bites his tongue while half of her forearm disappears. But a moment later, her arm reappears, and she frowns. “It’s not working. I wonder …” 

“Wonder what?”

Vex ignores his question. She squints at the portal, then speaks a few more syllables and waves her hand over it. He’s not sure if he imagines it, but Percy thinks he sees blue sparkles floating through the air around her hand. “Okay. That takes a full day to really work so …” She turns back to Percy, eyes dancing. “I’m gonna have to spend the night with you.”

“Excuse me?”

*

It makes sense, eventually, once she explains that she’s cast a trap spell on his portal. “If I can see something that comes through,” she says, “it will help me figure out what kind of magic made the portal and how to close it.” Percy takes her word for it. It’s not like he minds having her around, even if the idea of her spending the night makes his brain think rather more inappropriate thoughts. 

But he’s a gentleman, so as evening approaches, he offers his bed - without him in it. “It’s closer to the bathroom,” he explains, “and you’ll want to be as close as possible.”

That makes her laugh. “I’m not turning you out of your bed, darling. The couch is close enough.”

They sit up together for a long time, though; Vex seems to be willing to answer questions, and Percy has a million of them. “How does a person get involved with this kind of thing?” he asks. “I mean, other than getting bit by a pixie in the shower.”

“My brother and I grew up with it,” Vex says, curling her legs underneath her. “You could say it’s the family business, in a way.” 

She doesn’t seem to want to follow that train of thought, so Percy veers in another direction. “How did you meet Keyleth? I’ve known her since we were teenagers, and I had no idea about any of this.”

“Do you know her family?” When Percy nods, Vex waves a hand in the air. “Does it really surprise you that they’re magical?”

“Okay, you have a point.” 

“My brother and I were hunting for an escaped phooka, and we ran into Keyleth on the way. Turns out the phooka had been fucking with her cousin’s greenhouse, so she helped us set a trap for it. We’ve been friends ever since.” 

“Okay, now I have to ask, what’s a phooka?”

“Really? I thought you read all the things when you were a kid.” But she cheerfully explains, which leads to another topic, and another … Percy rather wants to continue this conversation forever. Partly because he loves learning about these insane things, but mostly because he wants to keep watching her laugh and gesture wildly. As the night goes on, he starts wondering if he has the nerve to ask her to come over again, without any portals or pixies to interfere. Or maybe he should ask her out to dinner. To say thank you for her help, of course. That sounds like a logical thing to do, right? He wonders …

Suddenly, there’s a loud crash from the direction of the bathroom. “Shit,” Vex says, jumping to her feet. “I think we caught a live one.”

*

It … is certainly alive, that’s for sure.

The thing stuck to his bathroom wall is brown and misshapen, and it hisses when Vex approaches. “A bogie?” she says, sounding incredulous. “What the hell is a bogie doing here?” 

“What’s a bogie?”

“A boggart? The bogey-man?” She frowns and steps forward. “It’s not very intelligent, and not nearly as dangerous as the pixie. They usually don’t hang out in the same places, so it’s weird that they came through the same portal.” She sighs. “This is where Keyleth would come in handy, she has a spell that lets her talk to these kinds of things. Me, I’m gonna have to …” And with that, she waves her hand in front of it. Percy sees more blue sparkles in the air.

And then, the next moment, he sees nothing but a brown blob, as the bogie detached from the wall and flies straight into his face. 

It’s bigger than he thought it was - big enough to cover his entire face, to block both his nose and mouth, which makes it nearly impossible to breathe. And when he does try to breathe, he feels a strange light-headedness. “Not again,” he tries to say, but it comes out more of a garbled mess.

He’s about to faint (again) when the blob disappears. As he gasps for breath, Vex flings the thing toward the shower and casts another spell. “I’m sorry!” she says, once the bogie is contained. “I didn’t think it would move that fast …” 

“Is every …” Percy starts - _is everything in the Hidden Lands poisonous?_ \- but his voice fails him. He brings his hands to his throat; it burns a bit, no wait, it burns a lot, what’s happening?

“Shit. Okay.” Vex stands in front of him, murmuring another incantation. Percy hopes it will make something stop burning. Please.

He doesn’t actually expect her to grab his face and kiss him soundly.

(At least it stops the burning. In his throat, anyway. There are other places in his body that feel a bit overheated when her tongue finds its way into his mouth.)

When she steps back, all Percy can do is stare at her. She grins, but her cheeks are a little bit red. “Did that work?”

“Um. Yes?”

“Good. I mean, I’m sorry to - you know - without permission, but it was the easiest way. I had to stick something in your mouth, and …” She shrugs. “Tongues are more pleasant than most anything else?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Pleasant.”

And then he sits down on the toilet, because holy shit.

*

Percy isn’t sure exactly what Vex learns, once she actually examines the bogie. All he knows is that she figures out where his portal comes from. “Those assholes,” she mutters, reaching into the portal again. “I’m gonna have to sic Allura on them, they’ve broken at least a half dozen accords just by having that facility …”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s - well, it’s secret stuff, unless you work for us.” She withdraws her hand, and suddenly, the smudge disappears. “But the upshot is, you shouldn’t have any poisonous creatures jumping out of your shower any more.”

“Oh. Well, good.” But his brain is working now. “So, how does a person go about working for you? Do you need to have a particular talent?”

Vex looks at him for a long moment. A smile spreads across her face. “Depends on what you want to do. I hear you’re a scientist.”

“Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”

“There’s a science to magic, it just doesn’t work the way you think it would. We have a whole department dedicated to figuring it out.”

A thrill runs through Percy at the thought. “And how would a person go about applying for that kind of job?”

“You have to know someone.” She winks. “Luckily, you do.”

“Good to know.” Percy takes a deep breath. As long as he’s asking … “And what would it take to get you to have dinner with me?”

Her answering smile lights up the whole room. “You’ve already earned that much, darling. I’ll pick you up on Friday at 7.” 

This time, she only kisses him on the cheek, but since it doesn’t involve either poison or magic, Percy will definitely take it.


End file.
